Rhapsody Streaming Music App Added to Xbox Live

The Xbox 360 has seemed to struggle to find its niche when it comes to the whole music thing, with the Zune marketplace being considered a failure and Microsoft introducing Xbox Music recently to a very dull reaction. The console itself is even a pain to get music onto, as you cannot simply transfer MP3 files onto your console’s hard drive like most modern devices work. If you want music on your console, you have to rip them as wave files from a CD and that will take up a lot of room. Of course, you can use a USB drive to listen to songs, but you cannot actually copy them over. For me, I actually use a media server and stream music to it, but I know for many people they use services like Spotify, Pandora and yes, Rhapsody.

Rhapsody just recently announced that they will be joining the likes of Last.fm and Xbox Music as a streaming music service offered on the Xbox 360 dashboard. Rhapsody is a relatively popular streaming music service that operates on a paid subscription basis much like other services like Pandora and Spotify, and you can now listen to music via Rhapsody on your Xbox 360 console. The app is available now for Xbox Live Gold members and for Rhapsody subscribers. No word in Rhapsody’s official announcement if the service is usable in-game, but my assumption is a big “no,” which might not make it the best addition to your Xbox 360 experience if you like to put on music while you play games.

If that is your poison, then you’ll still have to use a media server, USB device or manually rip the music to your Xbox 360, which is kind of a bummer. But, if you are like a majority of people now and use your consoles as an entertainment hub, and Rhapsody is your service of choice, this is for you.